David speaking Syrian Arabic

This video was recorded by Tushar Rakheja in Dallas, USA, where he and David live. Syrian Arabic is spoken by as many as 20 million people, primarily in the Levantine nation of Syria, and by diaspora communities worldwide. It is a variety of Levantine Arabic, which encompasses Arabic varieties spoken across parts of Syria, as well as Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, and Israel. In Syria’s east, ‘Syrian Arabic’ may also refer to Mesopotamian Arabic, the most widely spoken language in Iraq. In both cases, these spoken varieties differ substantially from Modern Standard Arabic, which is more commonly used in literature and modern media. This duality between formal and colloquial language is often described by linguists ‘diglossia’.